How can precision engineering help your cheese production line thrive?

Cheese making at any level is a highly specialised process which involves hundreds of variables to control. Today’s cheese industry demands consistent flavour profile and quality, regardless of volume. Using precision engineering, advanced automation techniques and data analytics cheese makers are edging ever closer to near perfect systems.

However, to fail at the last hurdle because of leaking packaging is to undo all the hard work cheese makers put into creating a consistent line. Leak detection remains stumbling point for many producers. Power Food Technology launched the Leak Detector in 2017 in response to this. Our clients sought a reliable system to check for leaking vacuum on sealed cheese blocks.

The Leak Detector is an inline system which can test cheese blocks for leaks without stopping the product flow. It is a fully self-contained, automatic machine with its own independent control and on-board PLC controller. However, the machine can be designed for seamless integration into your existing system.

One hundred per cent of blocks are tested with this system. The Leak Detector is recipe driven so different cheese types can be tested with no setup requirements. This unique machine can adjust to softer cheese blocks with less curd definition and it handles block height changes automatically and with ease.

The benefits of this unit result in a higher detection levels and fewer false rejects and clients can detect line problems faster and with better accuracy. Fine tuning the performance and consistency of your cheese line is a must in today’s dairy industry.

Power Food Technology has – for 35 years – helped our clients develop new and innovative solutions, keeping them one step ahead. The Leak Detector is one of Power Food Technology’s newest solutions.

Growing volume and improving quality as a cheese producer has many hurdles, but investing in an expertly designed solution tailored to your brands vision and potential is a step in the right direction. Designing a complete solution with Power Food Technology – including packing, leak detection, weigh labelling, chilling and palletising – will help you harmonise your cheese line, no matter how big or small your current operations are.

A fully realised system from Power Food Technology will reduce trim loss, as cheese blocks are squared and shaped under compression during packaging, so pre-pack losses can be as low as 0.5 per cent.

A custom solution from Power Food Technology can also improve the consistency of your flavour profile. With a controlled uniform cooling process of each individual block, we can eliminate the problem of off flavour that occurs in the centre of blocks. This uniform cooling also allows moisture content to be optimised without the risk of incurring warm curd flavour defects, increasing product yield.

A Power Food Technology turnkey system aims to fully automate your cheese line and give clients real time analytics and full control. Our warehouse management system has an automatic sampling function, vat identification and product traceability, all available via a PC and SCADA system. Having a fully automated system also reduces labour costs, as such a system would require one or at most two operators.

The demand for cheese is growing around the world. In Europe, by 2026, we are expected to be producing over 1.1 billion tonnes of the cheese. Therefore, cheese producers need to grow too, to feed that market. Whether you are a multinational company or a local farmhouse producer, turnkey solutions are the most efficient way to prepare for expansion. Power Food Technology can help clients plan for the future, with many of our systems designed so that they can be expanded easily in the future if needed, without major capital investment.